While name-brand political pundits confidently declare that “climate is gone” as an issue after the latest elections, leading climate scientists warn that continued global warming will produce more catastrophes like this year’s deadly heat wave in Russia and flooding in Pakistan, along with crop failures, the spread of tropical diseases, rapid species extinction and the drowning of coastal cities.

Back in August 1953, before many readers of NEXT100 were even born, Popular Mechanics ran a story titled “Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature.”

Citing the work of Johns Hopkins University physicist Gilbert Plass, the magazine warned that carbon dioxide released from the burning of coal and oil would raise Earth’s temperature about 1 ½ degrees a century “in the same manner glass heats a greenhouse.” The article noted Plass’s prediction that CO2 levels in the atmosphere would double by 2080, significantly increasing global temperatures.

The New York Times, reporting on his findings in 1956, observed that a “rise in the average temperature of only 4 degrees C. would convert the polar regions into tropical deserts and jungles, with tigers roaming about and gaudy parrots squawking in the trees.”